You Got Served

You Got Served by Ted Bartlett

Ted Bartlett evaluates draft-eligible prospects in his spare time, among a number of activities he pursues, including golf, MBA classes, and smirking about how much he's outkicked his coverage on the girlfriend front. When his kindergarten teacher told him that he was advanced, what she was saying was that, with minimal effort, he'd be able to do better than "really passionate" people who try their hardest. He also focuses on the NFL's business and legal environment, offensive and defensive schemes, going off on unrelated tangents, and all 32 teams in the NFL. Follow along as he offers his instant analysis of tonight's NFL Draft.

Ted Bartlett evaluates draft-eligible prospects in his spare time, among a number of activities he pursues, including golf, MBA classes, and smirking about how much he's outkicked his coverage on the girlfriend front. When his kindergarten teacher told him that he was advanced, what she was saying was that, with minimal effort, he'd be able to do better than "really passionate" people who try their hardest. He also focuses on the NFL's business and legal environment, offensive and defensive schemes, going off on unrelated tangents, and all 32 teams in the NFL. Follow along as he offers his instant analysis of tonight's NFL Draft.

Are y’all ready to get RAMD? For the third year in a row, I’m doing a Rational Actor Mock Draft, which assumes that I know what a rational actor would do. Basically, if every team were run by somebody who thinks like me, this is what would happen. Please note the following ground rules:

1. Trades are allowed, and will generally stick semi-close to the Value Chart, despite its general stupidity as a tool. I do this to keep things inarguably reasonable, even to devotees of the Chart.

2. This is meant to describe what teams SHOULD do, not what they WILL do. I’m not interested in regurgitating Peter King’s disinformed mock, and you shouldn’t be interested in reading something like that. Take this exercise as me sharing my thought process, and hopefully, a bit of football insight.

3. As such, I don’t care if this matches any actual picks, as they happen. When PK or some other tool is patting themselves on the back for getting seven or eight right, I’ll be smirking at them. When they bitch about agonizing over this pick or that pick for hours, I won’t be; there’s no agony to this whatsoever.

I’m glad we had this talk. Turn your clothes backward, and Jump! Jump! Because I’m the Daddy Mack, and I just told you to.

Happy Monday, friends. I was hoping to get Part 7 of my Manning Offense series done while I was in Dallas, but alas, we ended up working three long days, and I didn’t have time. It’s going to have to wait until after the Draft, because I need to shift to that situation.

How is it possible that the best Broncos site in the world hasn’t done a single bit of mockery? Have you considered that? I would say that it’s mostly because we think that it’s a waste of time, and that there’s no shortage of people spending their time doing and updating them. When it comes down to it, we don’t know what the teams are going to do, and when a good mockery performance is getting six or seven picks out of 32 right, what’s the point?

I do one annual piece of mockery, called the Rational Actor Mock Draft (RAMD), and I’ll be doing that tomorrow. Expect that to be IAOFM’s only foray into mockery, once again. The way we see it, it’s better to cover what actually happens on Draft weekend than it is to do 74 mocks between January and April. As in the past, you’ll want to be here for the best coverage between Thursday and Saturday.

For today, I’m going to give you some thoughts about football, the Draft, and what I think the Broncos should do this week. Fun times, right? Ready… BEGIN!!

We decided not to do Chewing the Fat on Sunday, as New Year’s Eve recovery efforts remained underway at 4:15 PM ET. I went out of my way not to overdrink on Saturday night, so I’m pretty spry, and I decided to do a running diary of both the Broncos game and the one between the Raiders and Chargers. I’m hoping for simultaneous excitement that comes across as compelling writing. If the games disappoint, at least you’ll get my on-the-fly thoughts on both games.

Happy Tuesday, friends. I’ve gotten some requests to do a Digesting piece on the Broncos, and I decided that I’d do one today. I’m in the process of writing a very lengthy paper for my marketing class that’s due on Wednesday, so I need something a bit shorter than usual (not so much, as it turned out) for the site today. I figure that I can go short medium-to-long, and still make some people happy. Ready… BEGIN!!

I’ve obviously watched every snap that the Broncos have taken this year, at least three times. Where I can get a good sense of an opponent by watching a game or two, I would hope that I have a great sense of the Broncos. Here goes.

Happy Victory Tuesday, friends. Are you getting used to Victory Tuesdays, yet? I kind of like them, personally. Those of you who had your hearts set on a Top-5 pick may not, but football is funny. Players and coaches like to win, and they try really hard to make that happen, and sometimes they get it done, even if some find it to be strategically unpreferable. In this space, we’re always pro-#winning, so deal with it. Ready… BEGIN!!

1. Today, I want to share some thoughts about why the Broncos are winning, and why it has seemed like a tale of two seasons. There are a number of reasons for it, and it qualifies as a confluence of all of those reasons. I’m one guy with an opinion, but here’s my list:

a. It took a little while, but the team has taken very well to the new defensive scheme. The Broncos tried to use even-front players in a Fairbanks-Bullough 3-4 scheme for two seasons and didn’t have great results. This staff came in and installed an aggressive 4-3 that has a very simple and sound approach to gap control.

Happy Tuesday, friends. It’s been five days since the last Broncos victory, so I decided not to rehash it, since it’s been done to death at this point. I have been working on a short (for me) essay about pass protection, and I decided to make it longer and more detailed and give that to you today. Friday, it’ll be back to Digesting the Chargers, and we should be on the regular schedule from here on out. Ready… BEGIN!!!

1. Once, when I was three years old, I woke my mother up from a nap. A man was breaking into the house downstairs, I told her. He was tall and had dark hair, and was coming in through the window in the living room. I was telling my mom about this guy in vivid detail, and like any mom, she got scared. I had three younger siblings who were all also having a nap at the time, so my mother went and frantically made sure that they were safe. Then she locked us all in one room and called the cops.

As it turned out, that was an early indication of the kind of storyteller I was to become. It was like little Eddie Murphy telling the joke about the monkey kicking the lion in the ding-ding. We are all uniquely ourselves, and our character starts getting revealed at a young age. I wasn’t lying, of course; I had just thought up some cool fiction and was sharing it with my mom. She was not as impressed as I thought she’d be, and on the rare occasion I’ve ever heard her tell that story, the context is how hard it was to raise four little kids at once, and tangentially, that I had a hellion moment here and there. (Both are fair points, of course.)

Happy Victory Tuesday, friends. Today, you’re going to get a Serving of thoughts on the Chiefs game, and something to Digest about the Jets, since that game is being played on Thursday night. Get excited, because it’s a two-fer Tuesday. Ready… BEGIN!!

1. Sunday’s win came in an unusual way, but you should never apologize for a victory. One of the Denver reporters got a little smart-assed with John Fox, and asked if he’d ever coached a game like that before. Fox kind of smirked, and said that yes, he had. It turned out that he won that one too. Jake Delhomme was out, and they pounded the hell out of the Falcons that day and played good defense.

For the last two weeks, the Broncos have gotten in touch with their physical side on offense, and a creative and effective running game has led to back-to-back road AFC West victories against both of the Broncos’ most hated rivals. For a Denver Broncos fan, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Somehow, though, being a Broncos fan has gotten to be more complicated than that. Somehow, everything came to revolve around the Quarterback, and sides have been chosen; everybody seems to have a bias one way or another, and the Broncos and Tim Tebow keep confirming it, whatever it is. For a while this was amusing, but it’s really kind of tiresome to me at this point.

Happy Victory Tuesday, friends. I hope you’re ready for a Serving, because I’ve got one for you. I’m in last place in the picks competition, and a primary reason why is that I’m now 2-6 in picking Broncos games. (I had them losing to Green Bay, and beating Miami.) You can’t win them all, I guess, and I just don't seem to have a great feel for when the Broncos are going to play well. Maybe if I read the DP rather than Doug's parsing of their work, I might know if they "had a good week of practice."

Anyway, today we’re going to explore in detail why the Broncos beat the Raiders on Sunday. It was a total team win, as has been said, but more than that, I would say that it was the first time this season that the offense pulled its weight. Aside from a couple of missed throws by Tim Tebow and some penalties (I’m looking at you, Ryan Clady) it was a consistent and productive effort. Since offense is kind of my thing, I’m excited to spend some time talking about it. Ready… BEGIN!!